I like having Post Whenever as a feature. It's a good fit for the site while it has a lower population. It help balance two of the difficulties of a small site. Needing people to post more, and the risk of a user dominating the front page making things look like a mono-user site.

The problem with Post Whenever as it currently exists is it doesn't give a lot of feedback. It's a black hole where a user simply trusts it will post. And when it does break it's going to break silently.

I was about to just knock out a visual system for it but I had some competing thoughts and I figure it's better to get feedback now before I write code so I write the right code. We're basically only going to do one of these.

Idea 1: Make a URL that shows the entire post later queue. It shows the posts, users, time it was added. When you make a post whenever it redirects to that listing. Bonus points, if you make a post whenever you also get to see the upcoming content others added early.

Idea 2: Make the post initially hidden from front. Schedule resetting it's time and unhiding it from front.

Advantages: The user gets to see an actual post right away. If the schema of a post changes there isn't risk of post whenever code or data going out of sync. If people manage to upvote the post before it's been "posted" then when it gets "officially posted" (reset time and hidden status) then the post will have a huge advantage. It's a good incentive to use post whenever when your post basically gets two shots at being new.

Disadvantages: It's going to be confusing to users when they clicked post whenever and instead there is actually a post on the site. Then users who don't know what's going on will think their post is being disadvantaged when they can't find it on the front page.

Idea 3: This is one I've been thinking about doing for a while. Basically mandatory post whenever. When a post is made measure if the front page is already dominated by the user. If it is add their post to post whenever. Then encourage users to over post since we can handle it elegantly.

Advantages: We don't have to depend on a users judgement of when to use it or not or even their memory that it is there. We are also lowering the friction to over post (the good side of it). Got 30 links you want to share, go ahead. We'll cut you off at a sane point and just save them for later.

Disadvantages: Some users will be surprised when their post doesn't make it to the front page. Some post topics might be time sensitive, not interesting later, or titled wrong to posted later. Yesterday's news and whatnot. But I suppose people would just learn that if they make 8 posts not all of them are going to make it to the front page right away. That's the other downside. Will people make those 8 posts if they think the last 5 are being disadvantaged? They aren't being disadvantaged but it will appear that way if done also with idea 2 with no extra communication. We do in fact want all of those posts. We just don't want to display them all at the same time if it's very similar content all from the same user if instead we can use that content to fill in gaps.

Idea 4: Do nothing. Just debug the current code and assume it will never break silently in the future.

Recap just so we have short descriptions near the poll.

Idea 1: Global visual system for showing the post whenever queue
Idea 2: Make a real post right away and schedule it hitting the front page later
Idea 3: The site does post whenever on its own
Idea 4: Just debug current code, and do nothing else